


bring the chorus to the tomb

by kantan



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dark Joseph, F/M, Fantasizing, M/M, Masturbation, Praise Kink, Pseudo-Incest, Religious Content, Secrets, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn, other pairs also gossiped enthusiastically about but not huge, will be listed before each chapter!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:56:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26666317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kantan/pseuds/kantan
Summary: There is rarely smoke without fire and the Hope County rumor mill is only half untrue. The Seed family gossip runs, for a while, like so: there is something not love between John and Jacob, for John loves no one so much as Joseph, and the Father loves best sweet Faith, who looks too kindly on brother John—they say this all for laughs because, otherwise, there is but blood in their fields.(An AU that takes the most pessimistic interpretation of Joseph, assuming that he knew all three of his heralds were going to die for the prophecy from the very beginning of the Reaping. Jacob and Faith both knew this—John did not. The whole of Hope County gossips right through the train wreck from start to end, for much needed levity.)
Relationships: Faith Seed/Jacob Seed (implied), Jacob Seed/John Seed (implied), John Seed/Joseph Seed
Kudos: 6





	bring the chorus to the tomb

**Author's Note:**

> Some pairings are just gossiped heartily about, and clogging up the tags seemed a bad way to list them. For the curious, here is the comprehensive list for the first chapter: Jacob/Faith; Jacob/Staci; John/Faith; Joseph/Faith; Nick/John; and finally Joseph/John, the only pair who actually do the down and dirty.

_“However, happily, Sister Marie Augustine says thoughts are not sins, if they are driven away at once. You say Lord save me, I perish. I find it very comforting to know exactly what must be done. All the same, I did not pray so often after that and soon, hardly at all.”_

ANTOINETTE, _Wide Sargasso Sea_

_“No! Don’t think of that—not yet! I want a little while of happiness—in spite of all the dead! I’ve earned it! I’ve done enough—!”_

LAVINIA, _Mourning Becomes Electra_

They don’t see each other too often anymore—they are separated by mountains, the slope of a valley, and their own individual problems. The last time John remembers all four of them together, they had a service and they had thought it would be a very normal day. He supposes Joseph must have known it was not; in a quick hour, everything has changed to the sound of handcuffs and helicopters.

He does not understand why, but Faith is fond of him in a weird way—in another world wherein John dies quick, two days into the Reaping, the Hope County residents start saying, “God protect us, Faith will be angrier than a wet hen.” If he could peer into that world from beyond death, and see the dark blind drop across his sister’s bright face, he might be more kind to her. For now, she irritates; she is always looking at him with wet eyes. Is she crying for him, or just for herself, letting her eyes fall where ever they may?

The truth is really quite simple. Faith likes John best, largely by elimination. Joseph terrifies her in part, awes her on the other days, and Jacob is too aware she is superfluous. Of course, she understands this to be true, but she spends all her time helping others play pretend—it is only natural she falls into it herself, falls into thinking she might be more significant than she is.

The odder thing: Jacob is even indebted to her, in a way. He sends his Chosen occasionally to haul back supplies of Bliss—when he is feeling a strange sort of way, he comes himself, and Faith makes sure to greet him personally. Not through a veil of Bliss, but feet on the earth, present, her hands in front like an upside down prayer. They may both be Heralds, but they are not equals; she is little sister, little, _little_.

He pays her a visit one week after the Reaping starts. “So?” Jacob asks, meaning more, “How are things going?” but chooses to leave his amiability unsaid.

Faith looks at her fingers, fiddles. “I haven’t got the jail back yet, Jacob.” A meaningless noise comes out his mouth, shrugs. “Your angels are undisciplined. They can’t mount an offensive against such a good defensive position.”

“Is it a lost cause?” she asks innocently, and she is hoping he will slip into some rousing speech, like the kind he gives his own men. Practically, it would do nothing, but Jacob has a strong voice, no competition with Joseph perhaps, but fortifying in its own right, and she would like—

“Maybe for you,” he says, rather cold to her ears, but does continue: “I may have some men to spare. I’ll see, but don’t let that stop you from trying, eh?”

Jacob is offering her some of his own? Strange times, she thinks, but smiles outwardly, walks towards him with less caution. He crosses his arms—this stops her for a bit. Yet, she knows this to be a sort of breakthrough; she knows breakthroughs well, it is the whole point of her.

“Jacob, will you let me ask you this?”

He scoffs, “And how can I say yes or no if you don’t even ask the damn question?”

“Maybe... just maybe, we’re not meant to have that jail?” She looks at his face because it is useful to see what he thinks reflected on the shifting scars of his face, but also because she is less meek than he thinks, and the act was gone the moment the question came out of her mouth. It’s a dangerous one, let’s hope no one will hear it—she throws this out into the air, half-prayer, just to cover all her bases.

Jacob smiles. He has not heard the girl say anything but platitudes for the last few years, all white noise, all without meaning, but now her soft voice is sharp, even more so for having been hidden so long. No—no smile, this is worth a laugh, which he does.

“Don’t let Joseph hear you say that!” he barks, and Faith winces at the volume of his voice. “But you know what? You’re right, and I imagine Joseph knows it too.” Another novelty: suspicion now paints Faith’s features.

“Why did you say you were going to lend me some of your troops?”

“What? You give up that easy?” He pauses, draws nearer to her surprise. Perhaps it is a gesture of camaderie, she thinks, as he wraps a strong arm around her shoulder, mouth to her ear. Jacob smells like the sterile soap he uses, a soap that emits neutrality somehow as a fragrance, but it never rids him entire of an undercurrent of the ugly: he smells, soap aside, of sweat and flesh.

“Now here’s something Joseph really shouldn’t hear. No one but God knows what he has heard... _who_ he hears.” Faith recoils, but Jacob is a military man and has a grip beyond her own—of course, she is also here, present, her two feet on the ground and she cannot float up anywhere. He looks down at her hands, takes them into his own. One is enough for both of hers, her fingertips poking out of his fist like her precious flowers, squeezed white from the pressure.

“So, take his book out of your hands, and put a shotgun in it. A rifle, a knife, anything, whatever you like, yeah? Words never killed a man.”

She looks at her hands, wriggling like fish, and back at him, smiling again. One might even assume he was happy. She says, “But Jacob, that is what I do.”

He keeps the smile but lets her hands go.

“I never did hear you call it that ‘til now.”

...

Does the Resistance have eyes everywhere, or ears, to see and hear everything about their enemies; are the Seed siblings turned notorious celebrities now, in a twisted sort of way? Perhaps, for rumor has it now that Jacob is unable to court anyone but in a beastly way, he squeezes ladies’ hands and has the men trim his beard. It’s all said mockingly, Jacob more animal than man, Jacob lost in human company, but John figures it must come from somewhere. He has seen the rumored man at least, the mousy Deputy Pratt, flitting in between the shadows of rooms.

He asked Jacob once, “What are you doing with him exactly?”

“You mean Peaches?” Jacob looked very smug then. “I haven’t decided yet. I like that the pests down in the mountains know he’s here. They’ll dream up all sorts of things; maybe I have him strung up naked on a wall?” Jacob made a motion, like a fisherman waving a squirming worm on the hook. He shrugged afterwards, “All he really does is chores.”

“You’re arrogant,” John told him plainly, “to let him near your throat with a blade.”

Jacob fingered the uneven hairs on his beard, “Huh. Never knew you had so little confidence in me, John.”

“It’s concern,” the younger brushed off the accusation, “I’m concerned about you.”

Jacob hummed, unconvinced.

Curiosity got the better of John then, for they were on the topic, and he added haphazardly, “Who is the woman, anyway?” John did not know it, but the confusion on Jacob’s face was genuine.

“What woman?”

“The woman whose hands you squeezed.” Jacob laughed then, out loud, full and hearty.

“You would be the sort to listen to the gossip. It was Faith.” John raised his eyebrow at this; Jacob waved his hand in the air, nonsense, nonsense. “It was, you know, comfort. The jail was overrun.” He frowned briefly, “Still is, for that matter.”

“You? Comfort?” John said incredulously, and perhaps he shouldn’t have, for Jacob looked at him a little sullen. He did not think his brother could make such a face anymore.

“I’ve done my fair share for you, I would think.”

John could not say anything to that, so he did not—they talked strategy, they talked everything else, and he did not stay for dinner, like he said he would.

...

More recently: John has lost Fall’s End. The Deputy is jumping around Hope County like some tooth fairy, collecting guns rather than teeth. He should not be too angry; they were not using the town for much, in truth, and he had it looted of most things in the early days. All John loses is a few of his people and a plane, but still yet, an inordinate amount of his ego. He takes it out on his captives, and Deputy Hudson in particular who is, of course, not really to blame. She does not even really know the reason, what she has done to incur more wrath than usual, but she has stopped attempting logic some time ago. Time passes like it is being scraped on the side of a grate: painfully and slowly.

One day, in the dark depths of John’s bunker where one could not tell night from day, the Father arrives, hands clasped and looking a false sort of troubled. He raises his eyebrows at the bodies on the wall, but says nothing critical. He says simply, “John,” with a lilt in his voice that demanded explanation.

“I-I’ve been remiss,” John responds lamely, throwing the staple gun onto the table. He seems to shrink as Joseph moves towards him, but never is there an expectation that Joseph would strike him—he places his hands on the side of John’s arms and rubs, gently, through his dress shirt.

“Good. Recognition is the first step. Now, what is the next?”

Hudson watches the two of them, their foreheads together now and their eyes closed. They are unaware of anything but the other, and if she were not tied up, she would run quick, run fast, run a knife through each of their throats. Joseph is the first to move away, patting the front of John’s chest where his confession of sloth is carved. He undoes the first button of his brother’s waistcoat, pulling the dress shirt further apart and slipping his hand in. He runs his fingers along the ridges of each letter; John follows its path with a serenity that seemed to imply that this was all terribly normal.

“What is next?” Joseph repeats, and John finally looks up, right into the aviators perched on his head. Joseph’s eyes remain on his sin. Atonement, he whispers into the glass; no, Joseph says from below.

“Not so quick, not that easy,” he chides, but he looks up and Hudson can see him smiling. She understands, loosely, that Joseph is meant to be father and brother at once, a bootleg Holy Trinity, but she did not think that the complication of father-brother was supposed to look like this. 

“What is next?” John repeats his brother’s words with some relish. He enjoys it, mindlessly hearing the soft drawl of his brother replicated in his own, higher-pitched, more wound up.

“Correction. Righting your wrongs,” Joseph answers, instructive, and he points now at Hudson, newly wondering now if she should have tried running anyway, restraints be damned.

“Show her, how she can be freed of her sins,” he says, one hand still on John’s shoulder and the other pointing didactically at the ceiling, “but do not kill her.”

Why does she bother anymore with yelling? They cannot hear her through the tape, and John might even be kinder if she had the resemblance of obedience. She struggles anyway—John rolls up his sleeves proper, for they have been undone by his brother’s roaming hands, before he lands a punch across her cheek. It hurts like all hell. Fuck the man, fuck the two of them—and Joseph chants the opposite:

“Good. Be gentle. Do no harm.” Good, gentle, do no harm; through the sweat and blood in her eyes, Hudson can see Joseph’s hands have returned to their task. They are up John’s shirt, hiked up now to his chest, keeping him close as he whispers into the younger’s ear. His finger is following the letters on John’s chest: S, L, O, T, H—repeat. Right below: John has Joseph’s name carved into his stomach.

“God,” she thinks, “just wait ‘til I get the fuck out of here.”

...

Faith is terrified, more so than ever before. It is not the jail, it seems to matter so little now, for the statue has fallen—the statue, the statue of _him_. It hurts a little too, just a malicious pinch, that Tracey had the book burned in particular, their Deputy scaling the statue like a naughty monkey. She hears her instruct them through the radio, and while Faith shouldn’t care very much, Rachel does, poking her head out for a bit before being dismissed with disdain.

Anger is a rare look on her, largely because it destroys the illusion of personal serenity—how could her people hope for an unconditional happiness, if their beloved Faith looked ready to sink her hands into some unfortunate’s throat? Regardless, the anger emboldens her. There is some deliberation, sure, but it does not take her too long to wander into Jacob’s mountains, surprising some of his Chosen who do not know whether to greet her or no. She hears them say, “We have been bringing in too much Bliss these days,” with a shake of their heads. She smiles, because it is what she does, but also because, against her better judgement, their disbelief is a little funny.

Jacob is busy. He always was, whether with the cult or his own inclinations, but he is not entirely unreceptive. He looks up, asks more with curiosity than irritation, “What, all the way here?”

“I was thinking you might like to take a break with me, just for a while,” she says straight-faced, and Jacob is quite plainly bewildered. At a loss, he simply repeats, “A break?”

“We could go hunting,” she explains, “with your wolves.” Jacob doesn’t respond straight after, pausing, it seems, to process the offer. He too is wondering whether it is all an illusion of the Bliss, but in his case it would certainly be worse if that were the case, if this was all he needed for “happiness,” however they are defining it these days. Faith lets him take his time.

“I’m not one to say ‘no’ to hunting,” he accedes, “though I’m not sure why _you’re_ asking.”

“I do not look like a hunter?”

Now it is the usual Jacob, brief, blunt, and ungentle: “No.”

They decide to go hunting nearby, but as they are far up in the mountains, the hunt surrounds them anyway. Jacob takes with him two of his Judges, newly reared he informs her, to see how they do. His own rifle, painted a captivating crimson and glinting in the sun, is non-negotiable, but he gives her an assortment of options. He points obnoxiously at the shotgun, the rifle, a knife, then grins, “A joke. You can pick whatever you like.”

“The shotgun,” she says, and when Jacob looks at her mildly surprised, she continues, “I’ll work up close.” That neutral noise again, whatever you like, he is saying, and hands it to her before looking at her, top to bottom. “You want to be out in the woods in that dress?”

She had not thought it over, in truth, she imagined herself looking from above, Jacob hunting below her with the ease of a hunter who has done it many times, in his life and in his dreams. She wanted simply to bring something about, wanted to point to a rowdy animal and have the power to say, Jacob, kill this one.

“I didn’t bring anything with me, Jacob.” She says it like she has been caught with her hand stuck in the cookie jar, plainative and really quite sorry. He sighs, runs his hand through his hair out of habit. “There’s probably some spare clothes in the trunk. I’ll look away. Just let me know when you’re done.”

She finds a shirt, Jacob’s own she imagines, and tucks it into a loose pair of black jeans. They are a little too long, held up on her waist with a belt only; she rolls the bottoms up, as if going off instead into the sea, for a wade in the water. Jacob is not looking, or so she assumes, because she is not looking at him either, as if he were changing as well. I’m done, she announces; alright, he says.

Deer, easy targets. She figures he is going easy on her, but it feels counter to his character. She does not question it, because it is strange enough that he said yes. The thing about the creatures is that they are skittish; they must stay very quiet, and slip through the grass without so much as a peep. Jacob talks to her with the glide of his eyes and the occasional wave of his hand. They find a pair not too far from Jacob’s base at the hospital and he puts a finger over his lips, as if they weren’t already deadly silent. Jacob points at himself, the deer on the left, then Faith, the deer on the right. She nods, grips the shotgun in her hands a little tighter, and starts to move, circling closer to the deer Jacob has pointed out to her.

Her signal is Jacob’s first shot, right between the eyes; it crumples, mid turn, twisting to its left to run. The Judges come out of the bushes in flash, aiming to pin down the one still remaining as Faith pulls the trigger, a blast that stuns and sends her falling backwards, the recoil stronger than she expected. The wolves have it—the shot has lodged itself in the creature’s chest and it is in clear pain, the eyes wet though there are no tears. Faith herself feels a burn, her ankle at an odd angle as she had been crouching before being pushed back by the force of the gun. It hurts her, but she stands up, and makes her way to the clearing where the deer lay dead.

The Judges are pleased with themselves, sniffing at the blood seeping into the soil; they have torn through the neck of Faith’s deer.

Jacob comes out smiling, proud even. “Not bad,” he tells her, but her ankle is undeniable, the pain shooting up her bones.

“It was your wolves’ work,” she says pointing at the bloody tear, “and I have twisted my ankle.” Well, he shrugs, we will take a look at it when we get back.

Because they cannot haul both back to the car, they must skin the deer then and there, with the wolves looking on with a clear hunger in their eyes. Jacob has trained them well; they don’t attempt even a bite, whining softly but not expectant.

“I made the little deputy skin deer once,” Jacob starts all of a sudden with knife in his hand, and Faith can tell just from the tone he means Deputy Pratt and not any of the others. Faith hears him say this, and yet she is still taken aback when he hands her a knife too, waving the handle at her as if it were obvious what her task was.

“Well? I imagine you’ll do better.” She takes the knife, he says, “It was not deer he was skinning anyway.” She looks at him then, his face in profile and his eyes focused on the task at hand. A life ago, someone had taught her how to do it, where the tip of the knife should start and where her hand should end. She must relearn it now, watching from the side as Jacob runs the blade straight down, cutting through its stomach.

“What was he skinning?”

“Who now?” Jacob asks absentmindedly, and she repeats: “What was the deputy skinning?”

“Some of the dead. Hopped him up on Bliss, played a little joke on him. I don’t think he really realized it, so a goddamn waste of time that was. But,” he says, knife pointing now at her, “that’s some of your good work on the Bliss, ain’t it? Credit where it’s due.”

Faith smiles at him, realizes what he’s doing. “I will take it,” she says plainly, and Jacob is not so comfortable with owning up to the good deed, says, “Uh huh,” says, “Get on with it then.” She follows his movements, but it is harder than he makes it look. Her knife gets caught on some of the tougher sinews, but a few twists and it slides down a few notches further. The blood that spills out is still warm and so are the animal’s guts, which Jacob takes away as she works at separating the fur and skin from flesh.

“That’s it,” he says, “you’ve got it.” She hums in response, and is able to get it off after a few more minutes. “We’ll head back, take a look at your foot,” he states rather than commands, and she nods as she gets up gingerly. It could be much worse, but the swelling has started—it will hurt worse tomorrow morning. Making her way back to their truck is the worst of it but she _does_ make it; Jacob has the skins in his arms and the wolves are nipping at their heels, stomachs satisfied with the meat of the deer they had been allowed, finally, to eat.

“Just jump onto the back,” he motions, throwing the skins into the cargo bed. One of the wolves take shotgun, and the other joins Faith, licking at her ankle with some tenderness. For all of Jacob’s training and brutality, the wolves are still endearing in this way; she pets its shaggy coat as they drive back.

Jacob has her foot on his knee. The jeans were difficult to take off, and a knife cuts them open at the seams. Jacob doesn’t look, again, and the shirt does good work in the department of decency. She cannot tell if he is being respectful or being prudish.

“Waste of a good pair of pants,” he grumbles for a bit, but relents after she shrugs at the accusation. She is not very sorry, for the pain is sharp and real at the moment.

“Next time,” she says, “I will know better.” She is not sure if there will be a next time, but she throws it out again, half-prayer. “Alright,” he says, noncommittal.

There’s not much he can do for her; there’s some ointment for pain in the first aid box and he smears it on, wraps the area up with a thin layer of elastic bandage. As he works she says vaguely, “Thank you. I know it was sudden.” He looks up, the bandage still not yet pinned down, looks uncertain.

“Yeah, sure. Real weird though. Something happen?”

“Mm, yes. Joseph will be angry at me, I think,” she starts, and Jacob raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Well, I am angry too,” she says, crossing her arms, “it took a lot of time, building that statue.”

“Ah,” Jacob says now, “the statue is gone?” Yes, she says, and his Word is burnt too for that matter, like you said I should. Jacob grins then, all teeth.

“Never did like the book very much,” he admits. “Joseph may be right. More and more I think he is, but I don’t like to fight losing battles. Best not to think of it that way.” Faith mulls on this a bit as Jacob starts hooking the metal clips on, keeping her leg still with a hand on her knee. With a sudden clarity she says with her voice low, “Joseph does not like being wrong. He will be angry either way.”

The tone surprises him, this time genuinely, and he looks up with a face that shows it. For the first time he sees a malice in Faith’s eyes that looks unnatural; she is looking down at her lap, seemingly unaware that Jacob has stopped just in time to catch the resentment flicker quickly past her brows and through the tightening of her jaw.

As a compliment he says, “You could skin a man now,” but she takes it differently. Eyes wide, she runs a hand over her face as if to wipe it clean. No, she says through her fingers, I would not.

...

Was it worth it, one of Jacob’s Chosen asks the other, stumbling into Jacob’s office just as he was holding Faith’s bare leg in his hands? They had seen her too, walking in the building, before saying to themselves, ah, the Bliss, the Bliss, powerful stuff. They did not think she had truly come, corporeal enough to swap her white dress for one of Jacob’s grey shirts, corporeal enough for Jacob to slide his hands down her legs. Sure, they had all thought once or twice that Faith was pretty, but they were not her brother, even if just in name. “Well,” the trembling witness responds, “she is not the first Faith. Maybe we should not be too surprised?”

On Faith’s end: “Oh, do not go skinning him,” she had told Jacob, “we need all the help we have left.” To his credit, he does not, and he says at one point, overly loud,“I am guilty of nothing, and he did not see shit!”

The story passes on, flowing down the river to the Henbane, then into Holland Valley. At the Spread Eagle, it is a hot potato warmer than the fries served up—the fries, they are not as fresh as they used to be for lack of supplies coming in. Pastor Jerome shakes his head, “We see now their falsehoods,” and everyone else is more vulgar: “Do you think Joseph knows they’re fucking?”

John thinks it is impossible, says as much when he overhears his own people discussing it like it was the news, like the world wasn’t coming to absolute ruin. Don’t you have better things to do, he asked, and they nodded vigorously before disappearing behind many walls.

As such, Faith’s visit is more unwelcome to him than it usually is, a feat already hard to surpass. Besides, she does not normally come with the bliss bullets he asks for, and he does not understand the sudden change. What’s worse, she is here in person, that is, appearing on the soles of her feet, walking right through the door, as opposed to emerging from bewildering green Bliss smoke.

What is it about her? Is it her smiles, the twinkle in her eyes that fade anyway if you look too long? He smiles himself, but they do not make him charming, they make him terrible—and dangerous. This is fine, it is not his job to lull and lure, but he finds himself wondering how he would do it and who he would use it on. Without dwelling on it for too long, his brain decides for him: I would like Joseph to look so fondly on me, as they say he does on Faith, and hold his hands in mine for no reason other than love, no lesson to be had, nothing in particular to be learned. On reflection, the idea tastes too sweet to not be embarrassing, even for him.

“My brother John,” Faith starts then, and now he must come outside his mind, “I have brought what you asked for, and I hope they will be of use to you.” Her smile seems wearier than usual, and he is not even looking to scrutinize her.

“I do try not to lean too heavy on the Bliss,” he says somewhat sourly, “but Joseph does not want that Deputy killed.” Faith’s mouth flattens then, into a displeased line, but she says only, “Yes, that is what he said.” There’s something there John does not quite understand; if it were anyone else, he would dismiss it all as fatigue, but this is Faith the actress, Faith the Father’s cheerleader. What is she doing, being more bitter than his morning coffee?

“Do you know something about what the Father has said that I do not?” He refrains from using Joseph’s name, and reminds her he is more than man, a prophet with a title. Faith’s countenance remains as it was, but her eyes try for a moment at spark before giving up the act.

“No, the Father would keep no secrets from any of us,” she offers anyway as an assurance, but it also gives him an in to be petty and resentful. He says quickly afterwards, “But you and Jacob, are you keeping secrets from him?” Faith looks taken aback; for the briefest moment, disappointment makes itself known in her frown, but John does not catch it—for the better, he has had enough of disappointment in recent days.

“Oh, John,” she starts with her hands on her chest—this is sincerity, she conveys to him—“Is this about that little story? That is all it is, a story, and the sinners do like to pass only the worst.” She at least does not rebuke him, Faith knows she is not in the position to do so.

John gestures then at her foot, still wrapped in a bandage, and says: “Yes, I imagine it was nothing as they say it was. Only that it reflects badly on us.” He is not lying, but the “us” tastes ugly in his mouth; he is wondering spitefully if he may be included in that “us.” Whatever it was they were doing—he was not invited.

Faith is not sure how to respond; she can tell regardless that John is not happy with her. She does not quite understand why, but she does know that he had always taken his job seriously, and he is in charge of that which she knows very little about it—PR, they call it. He is always on about images, and so perhaps this is why he cares so much about stories also. She settles simply for, sorry, we will be more careful.

John despises awkward silences, even more so than he is momentarily irritated by Faith, and so he says with some sheen of concern, moving hastily on, “Your bad foot. Does it hurt still?”

Faith jumps on this brotherly worry, “Oh yes, but it is much better now. I twisted my ankle, see.” She turns so as her foot is facing John. Indeed, he can see from this angle that it is still swollen.

He frowns, “It doesn’t look pretty. Why did you even come all the way here?”

“Well,” Faith starts cheerfully with finger on her chin, “it is different than seeing you through the haze of the Bliss. And I would not be able to this,” she leans into him, one hand wrapped around his arm, “see?” John is startled by the contact but does not move away, looking at her with questions in his eyes. She sees them and says, “John, I wish we could all see each other more often. Is it sappy to say? I wish you would not keep yourself so distant, and maybe,” her eyes light up now as if she has stumbled on a great idea, “we could do some gossiping of our own, what the dirty sinners do in their free time!”

Goddamn, she is good, John thinks. Perhaps it is an act, but he is convinced somehow or other that she is telling him this earnestly. Is it nerves, or are they worn down by the fighting, righteous as it is, without much sense of camaraderie? He has his troops, has his Chosen, but it is different on top. They are scared of him, even if just a bit and just the right amount, but with Faith at least they are looking up, somewhat trembling, at the same person: the Father up on high.

“Okay,” he sighs, as if surrendering, “we can do that.” He pauses, and leans back against Faith who understands: she pulls him into a tight hug, her hand on the back of his neck.

“I let the statue get destroyed,” she admits to him, “Joseph will be angry.” From her shoulder he finds himself repeating his own words, “Did he say anything?”

“No, and he will not _really_ be that mean. I will know though. I will know he is angry.”

He did not think he could understand her so acutely at that one moment, but he does, holds her closer and breathes in the smell of wet grass in her hair. He finds himself swept into a quiet lull when she says with a quick tap of his back, “Take a nap, brother. Work can wait for an hour.”

John has his bedroom on the second floor of his ranch; she maneuvers him there, hands gentle on his back as he grumbles all the while—the vest comes off (“How can you sleep in that?”), and he climbs in with a grunt. It’s a nice bed with warm sheets; he cannot shake off his bad habits, he is a creature of comfort. There are some more traces of past John: Faith looks through his small bookshelf, picks one out to read as John slumbers. This one has a woman, her face covered by her arms, in a white dress not unlike hers. She climbs in under the covers and opens the book to a random page. In the margins, past John, a studious John in his college rooms, has scribbled down: “Who is going to take Antoinette’s place?” The line reads:

“Yes, they’ve got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it’s a long, long line.”

...

The Deputy, being a newcomer, has yet to get the siblings entirely straight—they ask innocently at the bar one day, “Now, is Jacob the one with the vest and the blue shades?” Mary May looks at them weird, puts the glass she is cleaning down on the counter.

“Pretty sure that’s John you’re talking about there.”

“Really? Well, Sharky was just telling us about Jacob and Faith so I thought it would be him.” Mary May narrows her eyes at the Deputy, who has thrown this tidbit out so nonchalantly.

“Are you saying you saw something or what?”

“Well, not exactly, I just overheard something when I was helping Nick out with his plane,” Nick raises his bottle of beer at this, “something about John being preoccupied with Faith at the moment, don’t bother him, and such.”

Nick is telling Pastor Jerome about the news as Mary May stews on the phrasing, on the words—“What, are we on this again?” Jerome says, exasperated—and she ends up shrugging her shoulders. “Preoccupied could mean anything, he could just be yelling at her for all we know.” She turns to Nick, “Wasn’t the word around that John didn’t like her very much?”

It is Nick’s turn to shrug now, smiling amused all the while, “I don’t know man, but I could believe it, yeah.”

“Now hold on, I don’t jump to conclusions that quick,” Nick raises his eyebrows at that, mock offended, “His people were saying specifically that he was in his bedroom.” The Deputy jabs at the air: point proven. Nick, eyes wide, says with some incredulity, “Why didn’t you go take a goddamn peek!?”

“I wasn’t going to go risk my life for gossip!”

Nick continues, “That’s some freaky shit though, ain’t it... Maybe it’s a hate-love thing, you know.” Somehow, he doesn’t seem so capable of believing _this_ rumor. Jerome has his face in his palm, and offers more thoughtfully, “We _could_ use that against him?”

Mary May is unconvinced. “We really looking to take on two of the Seeds at the same time? Let’s just not piss off Faith before we deal with John. Alright?”

The Deputy has made off with the Rye family plane. Even worse, Joseph has come to see how he is doing; his smile is as bright as his golden yellow glasses, and John doesn’t want it to lose even a glint of its splendor. At least, the plane is more a personal loss than a substantial one and Joseph may not have reason to bemoan it.

“My dearest brother John,” Joseph says, it seems, with a bit of a flourish, before squeezing his upper arm with some affection. “A beautiful day, and good to spend it with you.” John smiles stupidly at him; he is always a little at loss for words when it comes to Joseph, who gives words out like presents: lavish, aplenty.

“Now, how are you doing with the valley? Faith, you see,” John grimaces unconsciously, somehow already cognizant of what he might say, “Faith is having some trouble with the stubborn near the Henbane. You may tell me honestly, John, if you are having trouble.” Joseph puts on a face of concern then, stops walking at the entrance of John’s ranch to turn towards him, to take a good look at his younger brother.

John does not look straight at him, looking to his left and right before feigning, “No problems at all, really.” He adds, “Though I hope Faith will have some luck soon with the unrepentant.” He means this genuinely, hears her voice—“Don’t you feel better now, after a good rest?”—and for once feels a little fondness for this girl, this not-really sister. Joseph hears it, and brightens further to John’s concealed glee.

“I hear a sweetness in your voice, John. It is good to hear and see my Heralds at peace when we are in such a war.” Joseph turns back towards the open ranch and walks into the shade. John follows him, as if the place didn’t belong, in truth, to him. He is unable to stop himself from staring a little too long at the hangar, however, one plane missing.

“Ah,” Joseph says, and with just one word John can already tell there is a _knowing_ in his tone, “this is the missing plane.” He gestures at the emptiness as if it were an object. John frowns, he did not think Joseph would have heard about it already.

“Yes,” he says simply, “I took a bit of liking to it.” Without even turning his head, John can feel his brother’s eyes boring into the side of his head, scrutinizing him.

“You took a liking to the Ryes?” It is phrased as a question but John hears it more as an accusation, says hastily, “Not anymore than anyone else.” He hears himself sound very vague—that was maybe a poor choice of words.

“I remember we went to their barbecue once,” Joseph is still smiling very brightly, “do you remember, John?” Yes, Joseph continues softly, almost as if to himself, we did in those better days.

“They did not know what to make of us,” Joseph finishes, “but Nick Rye did seem to like you,” he turns then to face John, “did he not?” John does not even register the question at first; the fact that Joseph has brought Nick’s name into his ears, direct and expressly, has him focusing his energy on not making any sort of face at all—no disgust, no frustration, no whatever else he had sunk down a while ago.

“The man is a very good pilot,” he says sincerely, and then by way of explanation, “it would be dangerous if he had his plane.” He leaves out, of course, the snippets of Nick’s shouts caught on the radio waves—the man is yelling he wants to leave, he wants to fly off and away from Hope County, and maybe he would be no danger then, but how could he act so arrogantly, as if he could? They are all deep in it now, the county a little snow dome, and John controls the skies with an iron fist; no one is leaving, and it is for their own good. It is also true that he does not want Nick leaving in particular, danger or no, because were they not—were they not friends once?

John does not have many of them left. In the early days, when they still held a veneer of legality, he would leave occasionally for towns, cities even, to deal with people and paper. His old friends, amused though they were by his “change of career,” invited him to all their usual places: bars, nightclubs, the stretched leather on the backseat of luxury cars. He could still be tempted then by the flash of champagne gold, white lines cut by credit cards, and a warm hand rubbing his jeans into his upper thigh—further maybe, on a good night.

After all, John takes after his brother in that there is an undeniable charm in the nobility of his cheeks and the way they look at people, always intent. Joseph’s eyes are a dark navy that speak to sadness turned strength, but John’s own are different: bright blue and twinkling. They draw out smiles and make him look boyish still, even as he twirls a cigarette in his fingers or has blood to the elbows. One old friend, intermittent old flame extinguished now, had said to him in a drunken haze: “You look like that pope on TV. ‘Small, round mouth... beautiful, blue eyes.’ He was dazzling, because God made him so beautiful.” He was still vain then. He found the series, watched it, and had thought without shame: “I see. This is what I must look like.”

He had told no one about his nights out and would make a point of complaining, “I spent the night alone in a run down motel with a bed harder than piled up stones!” Jacob would roll his eyes because he had seen worse. Yet, Joseph must have known, and perhaps it was written on his face, for one day he was finally called to answer for it: “sloth” across his chest, for he was neglecting his duties, so to speak. Never mind he got them all done, the acquisitions, the evictions, all of it.

Joseph puts his hand over the raised scar now and says, “Why do you want to keep Nick Rye here?” It is hard to hide things from a man who hears from God, but he never did think Joseph would find it terribly important to pry into his personal eccentricities. Besides, there was nothing between him and Nick besides soured affection. The man was happily married; a grip of the shoulder, a light brush of hands, was as far as they had gone, and Nick telling him, “You’re not such a bad sort,” with a flushed grin, two beers in. John had thought about it, wondered a little whether it could have gone further in the most fantastical ways: Nick’s palm on his neck, and him reciting a saccharine, “But you’ve a wife!” found only in shameless airport romance novels. Luckily, Joseph has never professed to reading minds. But, back now to the question: Why does he want to keep Nick Rye here?

“Is it not the same as you with the Deputy?” John eventually flings back a little snappily, and Joseph’s face darkens quickly, like a warning. He says, “It would worry me if the depth of your emotion was the same as I feel towards the Lamb.” John does not understand this, and perhaps he is at fault there for not reading Joseph’s Word as solemnly as Faith ever did, but he is fairly certain his brother’s interest in this so-called Lamb is newfound. Where did it come from? In a sinister small voice, his mind asks also, “And where do I fit into this?”

Well, it seems he has said it out loud now as well—it comes out of his mouth with some emotion, “Where do I fit into this?” and surprisingly, Joseph’s face softens, turning pitying rather than displeased. In other words, it has gone better than expected and he should have said it earlier, should have demanded attention rather than mewl for it.

“John,” Joseph says for starters, eyes clear and compassionate, “let us not strike fear in our people, who wish only to hear us joyous. Lead me, brother, to your rooms.”

Like Faith, Joseph has his hand on the small of his back. Joseph had told him to lead, but there is no question here as to who is leading. It is the same as it is on the grand scale; all the cult has, John has helped in procuring, but the relationship of totality is lopsided: everything of John’s is also the cult’s, and the cult is, in the end, Joseph’s. John has no fear of submission, only that it be deemed not enough, because what has he to give then? Of even more urgency: why _is it_ that they are not joyous?

“Look not too deeply into my words, John,” and the solemnity with which Joseph says this confuses him—he had supposed just moments prior that he was at fault for _not_ doing so, vigorously enough. “I only mean to say that you ask me questions. You have the right of it, but not in front of the people.”

“What might trouble the people could easily trouble me,” John says humbled, and Joseph nearly laughs in that way Jacob does when he is amused. “No,” he says with some mirth, “you are not the same. What is it that you say, ‘We are all sinners,’ and it is true—you take pride in being my Herald, and so the Lamb offends you. You are different from the Lamb, John. The Lamb is more important to the prophecy,” and here the words that follow strike John something strong, “but you are more important to me.” Come here, his outstretched arms seem to say, and John stumbles into them. He can feel Joseph’s own scars beneath his fingertips.

Perhaps this little movement reminds the Father, or perhaps it was always his intention, but Joseph whispers then, “Tell me, John, what was it that I said about correction?”

Into his shoulder, John mumbles: “Righting my wrongs.” There is a pause—he is just about to ask what he is to do when Joseph asks next, “And what is to come after correction? Do you remember? You had said it yourself.”

It takes some effort, but John peels himself from that warm, comforting body, turned a little colder in instruction. “Atonement?”

“Quite right.”

John lets Joseph pick the place: the tender spot right below the back of his neck. His shoulders come to a point there, his body as a whole peaks now at a crude confession of envy. Because he cannot reach it with his own hands, Joseph takes up the task with a sharp knife—one of Jacob’s perhaps, borrowed some time ago. Despite what the locals say, the sins their bodies bear are not tattoos; tattoos, in the end, can be covered up—these are meant always to be seen.

Joseph talks him through it, asks him again, “Why do you want to keep Nick Rye here?” Because John is still not so sure himself, he responds with a question in kind, “Is it because I envy?”

“Perhaps,” Joseph answers, “What is it that you envy about this Nick Rye?” For a moment, there is even humor infused into the pseudo-interrogation, “Surely, it cannot just be his plane?” The upward inflection seems to say, “I can get you a plane, John, if that is all it is.” A little joke, maybe.

It goes beyond the plane. It may even be more about himself than it ever was about Nick—just that Nick is happy where he is, in his little hangar, with his wife and the looming presence of Little Rye, who has already colored in the next eighteen or so years of Nick's life without so much a tiny word. He envies Nick, or so Joseph tells him, but if he were in his exact position, he thinks it more likely he would wonder, “Is this all there ever will be?” and Nick would think no such thing.

Well, Joseph has started working on the “E,” and maybe it will help him think clearer.

Now, just for a moment, let us not be coy about it—it is Joseph who is envious, and the word “curious” may also be used to be kind. He wonders why it is that John still feels a distinct need to be merciful to this family who had once befriended him. He has seen his brother kill people for much less. He would not let his own Chosen act like this, but he does let John do it: string up people in bags, staple their skin onto walls. He may do it if he likes, but John does not tie Nick Rye to his plane, fly it up in the air, and see how he likes the sky then.

“N,” John hears his brother say above him. By now, the “E” is searing, left to the open air. Perhaps it is weak of him, but he has no strength to say or think much of anything now. N, as in Nick, N as in, No more Nick. Is that not the whole point? His mind focuses, and is able to think as is proper: I envy, and it is no good to envy, and that is all there is.

Joseph’s hands are steadier than his, even if he is the one proper trained, because Joseph has not run his body through a parade of drugs. He works quick, and before he has thought too much about why they are doing this, Joseph is dipping his hands in a bowl of water and wiping them down on a towel. It turns a strawberry pink, and the smell of iron is in the air.

“Well done, John,” he says, but it sounds like he is admiring his own work more. He needs no permission; he runs his tongue down the letters then and it stings enough that John flinches, curls in further. With a swing of the swivel chair, John is facing his brother head on now, and the glasses close in. Joseph presses an open-mouthed kiss on his lips, the taste of blood still strong on his tongue. Joseph has to be careful not to place his hands on his brother’s bleeding neck, while John’s hands reach out for brown hair.

John doesn’t want to put it crudely, but this is the best part. The pain is its own delight, but better is his brother’s pleasure—and his own. Joseph has wormed one hand down his brother’s pants, the belt and button undone, and started cupping him through his boxers. Joseph never does say, this is your reward, nor does he say, I know what you have sacrificed, but his finger at the tip of John’s cock is telling him largely the same thing.

The chair creaks as he slumps down and it is followed by a hiss as his neck bumps just a bit against its back. Joseph smiles, righting him with his free hand on John’s chest.

“Sit still, John.”

John tries his hardest, hands gripping the edge of his seat. There is a clear tent in his pants, and a spot of wetness where he has started to leak precum, but Joseph has not deigned to slip his hand one layer further. He has kept all the dignity and the poise, but John likes to think the bulge in Joseph’s pants is real and no trick of the light. He will not let him help with it though, and never has in all the times before.

“Almost there, aren’t we?” Joseph says this as if they were taking a walk in the park, fingering the band of John’s boxers to push them off. John is eager to help, but is stopped with a light “no.” They are pulled half way down his thighs, and John finds himself lifting his hips up to keep his neck off the back of the chair, his hands clutched on the seat, and his dick in his brother’s hands.

Without words and his eyes closed, Joseph takes John’s cock into his mouth—first, but a quarter, and then slowly the rest. John whines, though he has nothing to complain about, and does his best to keep from bucking off the seat, for both their sakes. Joseph is running his tongue down the lower side of his dick, right along a vein. It draws grunts from John, but as his head is still clear he says with some desperation, “The bed? Please?”

Joseph considers it, but rejects the offer, rather devilishly in John’s mind. “No,” he says, “I know you can hold still. Be good now.” He does what he is told, with a huff. Besides, it is true that he is close, and the warmth of Joseph’s mouth again on his cock forces a mewl from his lips.

“I’ll be good,” he says a little pointlessly, for want of saying something. Joseph gets to it—head bobbing as his mouth slides up and down John’s erection, as flushed as his cheeks. John feels his legs near giving out, tense and stretched out so as to not to move. They close in against his will at times, but Joseph’s hands now have but one duty: to keep his legs spread, as far as they go with his jeans still wrapped below his knees. They’ve an iron grip on his thighs, and will leave a red bruise tomorrow morning.

With a cut gasp, John is able to grunt out, “I-I’m,” he swallows, “close,” and Joseph makes a little hum with John’s cock still in his mouth. The flick of his tongue as he drags his lips one final time down his dick has John over the edge, biting down on his lower lip to keep the moan in his mouth. He succeeds on that front, but is unable to keep his hips still, shaking between his brother’s lips and the cushioned seat of the chair. Joseph tastes John’s cum spill onto his tongue; he swallows it after he takes John’s dick out of his mouth with an air of effortlessness. What little he misses he wipes away with his fingers.

John is always a little embarrassed afterwards, mixed in with a great heap of humility. And, though he knows what the answer is, will ever plead, “Let me, please,” with one hand on the buckle of Joseph’s belt (the great LUST scrawled above fails to stop him) before his brother smiles upon him as usual.

“You are always sweet, if not gentle,” Joseph says, and guides John’s hand away. “Let us take care of your wound, shall we?”

...

The wrapping and gauze are too high on John’s neck to be hidden by the collar of his shirts—which he has always worn low and open anyway. To that effect, everyone can see bandages and old blood, but no one can guess at what it is hiding until a few days later, when an angry red ENVY is spotted across John’s lower neck.

The idea worms into the head of every curious soul in Hope County that the Herald brothers are having a little tussle over Faith—covet not your brother’s lover, perhaps. It is odd—for so long, they have been saying, ah, Faith is Joseph’s girl; “Father this, Father that,” surely one of them is into it. A little slack-faced, at about five in the morning and several drinks in, Sharky declared a few days ago: “Oh! Jacob is older than Joseph, isn’t he!” He had said it as if this solved the mystery, whole and entire.

At the Spread Eagle, right in the middle of John’s land:

“If Joseph were to punish John for the whole Faith thing, he’d punish Jacob the same though right?” It is Nick who offers this—ever since the incident with the plane, he has been particulary fiery, encouraged by the whole-hearted support of his braver wife.

Adelaide is also here; the Deputy has a fondness for pilots perhaps. True to self, she says, “Who knows? Maybe he’s just a pervert who wants to see John half-naked.” Nick’s eyebrows furrow—he is imagining it, for better or for worse.

“Are you thinking hard on it there, boy?” Adelaide seems amused, and it snaps Nick out of it. No, God no, he says quickly, but he is convincing no one. Mary May is hiding a smile with her hand, beer bottle raised to her lips and Grace, Grace is disappointed in him.

Adelaide continues, “I wouldn’t blame Joseph for it, mind.” She adds with a wink, “Or you, Nick,” and he is responding to that with a furious wave of his hand, a dismissal, a no way.

“And I mean for either of them too!” Adelaide concludes with finality as she nudges the Deputy, “If you catch him in the middle of it with Jacob, well... snap a girl some pictures, won’t you?”

Sharky, ever eager to impress his charming aunt, is trying to appear clever: “But, then he’d run out of space. And then, he’d run out of excuses, and then... well, he’d just have to ask for it.” He looks over to his newest hero on a pedestal—the Deputy, sitting with one leg off a bar stool—in search of affirmation. The Deputy nods, somehow convinced, and throws up a jolly thumbs up.

Adelaide knows better; she has been here longer. She says, “Oh darling, he wouldn’t have to ask _John_ very hard at all.”

Joseph does not even have to ask—rather, he will not. He leaves the ranch in a state of seeming serenity, and is flown back to his compound by John with great caution. One goodbye kiss on sweet John’s cheek, and his followers surround him as he raises one hand. Greetings to them all, and would they be so kind as to give him but an hour or two to rest? He will be out and about again, sooner than they know.

He makes it to his own room, and closes the door with no rush at all. When it is all quiet, he lays himself down in the bed set aside for him, and there is no longer any question about it—he unbuckles his belt and shoves his own jeans down to his ankles. Better, if he does not move too loudly anyway, constrained by them. He would let John do it, if he had less control, if he were a lesser man. Bad enough the occasional drowning, the accidental deaths from shock. They sit in their chairs with eyes glazed as John tuts, well, there are some who just cannot be saved. He hears worse up in the mountains, where Jacob turns starving men into wolves. But—this is not what he has come here to think about.

The brightness of the blood helps him recall, the curve of John’s nape and the way the blood ran down the small of his back. He is half hard again, having clamped down on it through the plane ride, staring straight into blue sky. He thinks to himself: John is fit but, above all, lean, and his shoulders are tight whenever he places his hands on them. He has his hand on his cock now, starting from the base and coaxing slowly up.

Shamefully, he keeps a small bottle of lube in an inconspicuous box under his bed. His free hand is able to find it easily—bad habits, old ones—and it helps him along. Soon, it is not enough to think just of the nudity of John’s back, and the twitch seen in the jump of his shoulder blade when the knife hurts particularly sharp.

It always escalates. First, because John has always offered it, he thinks of his pink lips: they are pretty, and he pictures them again, if they were wrapped around his dick. Joseph sees John’s bright blue eyes look up with adoration—if only he were to bury himself in his throat. He pushes his thumb in particularly hard at that image, and gets a little grunt in it for himself.

Then, into what has not had a whiff of happening, just yet: John’s thighs (which he has, gratefully, seen) spread as far as they go with nothing shackling his ankles. Joseph would hold them open so; he would see his cock slide in and out of him as he fucked him into his soft bed, toes hovering just above the sheets—that big bed he keeps in his ranch. He remembers what John has across his flat stomach, his name written out in scarring and the thought sends heat to his groin. With each push, this John trembles, and the letters move as if alive—there is no mistake, the possession is juvenile, like a kid writing his name across his lunchbox, but the wriggling of his name keeps his attention.

Joseph recognizes they would have to be quiet in this scenario he has created for himself, but these are dreams. The John in his dreams is loud and whines—he says things like, please Joseph faster, please, with his hands clutching the sheets, and Joseph has sped up himself now, thrusting into his own hand. The lube makes it easy, but it is not the same—he plays the moans and hitches of breath from his memory, but what he wants is response. He wants John to tighten around him when he hits particularly well, he wants John to buck into his stomach as opposed to the open air—he wishes, he wishes, wishes...

He tries to keep his seed off the sheets. Dreams aside, the stain would still be damning to explain. They might ask, who was the Father keeping as a lover? The technical answer would be nobody, which is too human, and the true answer would be brother John, which would be of concern.

He washes his hands in his bathroom sink. John found it humorously narrow, cramped, when they first arrived, but Joseph minds it little. The privacy is a special right in of itself, and he is grateful for it. His stomach he wipes down with a towel, rinses that off in the sink as well. With the smell of soap in his skin, he emerges from his room, relieved but not renewed.

His flock come to him quick, with questions and answers. Their answers are always sweet, but their questions hurt more. They ask, what should we do about the disruption of Bliss coming in from the Henbane? When he says, well, what are we needing it for beyond storage, and do we not have enough of it in our bunkers, they respond: “Oh, that is it exactly, we are needing it for storage.”

They do not tell him about the corpses that walk the river banks, their minds emptied out into river waters. Faith tells her Chosen on dark quiet nights: “The Father does not need to know. He has a vision, and we see to it. It is so simple and so easy, which is the best of it.” It may be that failure is in his vision also, but she does not want to know.

All the while, the Bliss is burning up in Faith’s fields. In particular, it is her conservatory that is in flames, one of the very few hold overs from her past to present life, the last connecting link perhaps. She feels a twinge of powerlessness again, and it upsets her for being what she had sought always to escape.

She throws all her people at it—save it, save it for me, won’t you all, she begs—but they lose it in the end. They are demoralized; they are convinced the end has come earlier, and they can’t find the strength to try anymore.

“They cannot see,” she complains to Jacob, “that this is not what Joseph _has_ seen.”

“The end?” He asks this with some nonchalance. “He has seen the end, if you were still wondering.” They are eating dinner together tonight, and it has forced all of Jacob’s people to keep their mouths in a decidedly neutral line. At least, there is to be no smirking in his line of sight.

Because she is in a poor mood, Faith says without coyness, “ _We_ , at least, will not see the end, if it comes as Joseph says. And we, we are still alive.”

“Ah, well then there’s still hope there, ain’t it?” The sour look on Faith’s face makes him rethink his words, a rare feat really, but no use upsetting the dinner guest. He says, “Alright, I do see the difficulty.” He pauses, racks his brains, “I don’t see why you can’t tell your people what you’ve just told me.”

Now it is Faith’s turn to settle into a look of confusion, as if the possibility never struck her as possible as all. “To tell them—what? That the end has not come until we are all dead?”

Jacob shrugs. “Yeah. It is not even because Joseph has told us so, but it helps that he has. What do you know, he hasn’t been wrong yet.” Then, impulsively, he utters out loud, “God forgive, but I would not mind it if he were wrong just this once.”

“What _has_ Joseph told you?” Faith asks this with curiosity, but something about the tone of her voice seems sinister. I do not think he tells us the same things, she says with her eyes on her plate. They are eating eggs, lightly salted and with pepper, alongside sausages and bread rolls. Breakfast for dinner, very quaint. Jacob had told her that his cook did breakfast best—she had said, “I hope this is not the cook I have heard about.” No, he laughed then, _that_ cook does very little cooking. There are still some things about Jacob, though he seems to have warmed to her, that feel ugly, and brutish.

“Oh,” Jacob says unfazed, “he tells us different things; of course he does.” Sausage on his fork, he takes a bite. “He’s not wrong to do it. Eden’s Gate is big enough by now, he cannot be coming down every day with an order in his hand for each of us. Can you imagine?” Jacob can’t stop a baffled smile crossing his lips here, “Can you imagine Joseph coming down to tell us what Jenny the driver must do, and Richard the cook, how much he has to cook down in the canteen?” Now, with pride: “That’s what we need to do. Joseph tells us,” he gestures with his hand, “broadly, just broadly, what he wants. Then, we handle the details, and I get Richard the cook to make us breakfast for dinner.” Jacob has finished the sausage, so he may use the fork to poke in the air with authority.

And, because Faith has only smiled, her response still broiling in her brain, he sneaks in, “Except for John, maybe. Joseph can give him the specifics, because John will try to do them to the absolute T—at that point, why the fuck not? Tell the boy what to wear, while he’s at it.”

“They do look rather alike,” Faith says, laughing now, but then is reminded, “Maybe that is why brother John seems always a little skittish. I thought he looked over worried, last I saw him.” Jacob raises his eyebrows at that, asks, “And when was that?”

“About a week ago, I think? Before what it was that happened to his neck.”

“Joseph’s doing,” Jacob says matter-of-fact, and he is eating the last bits of food now. The smoothness of the accusation surprises Faith, “That isn’t worrying?”

“Maybe.” Jacob is dumping the overcooked bits of the sausage into a trash bin—the best Richard can do, and still there are burnt bits?—and then tries to look disinterested, now that he can not conceal his concern in the movements of eating. “Joseph won’t kill his sweet baby brother.”

Faith realizes with a particular clarity that she knows rather little about their youth, but the mocking epithet still seems to be saying _something_ —“sweet brother,” where and why has Jacob hidden his enmity in that? In the end, the mention of death circles her back towards her own concerns, and she brushes curiosity aside.

“But... John is a Herald.” She is beyond senseless maneuvering now with Jacob, “He knows as good as we do that he may die. When he does, it will have been prophesied. If he does not, then we are lucky, and the end has not come just yet.”

Jacob is chewing on a nail. A habit? He says in the end, “I do not think John knows.”

“You think John does not know?” Yes, she knows it is silly to repeat his words back to him—she half thinks Jacob will laugh at her for it—but she does not know how else to respond.

“I don’t doubt John would be willing. I think Joseph does not have the heart to tell him.” For a moment, Faith thinks, this sounds vaguely blasphemous—but that would be if they supposed him beyond a man, and so does she think that is the case? She is not so sure yet, either way.

“I’d rather he not have told me,” she says now, a little petty and bitter. What is it about him? Is it solely because John is Joseph’s true youngest, and so he may go on a little more joyously than they do? Jacob remains silent, whether because he has slipped into a stoicism or he has decided to reveal nothing she does not know. He does reach over, a little brusquely, to pat her hand. It looks a strange scene, but she appreciates it somehow, anyway.

“Now, we are two in a basket,” he says, “so drink up.” He is pouring something into her cup, from a bottle she had not seen him take out. What’s that, Jacob, she asks, and he says without missing a beat, whiskey. As if he had just lit a stove under it, Faith takes her hand off the cup with quickness.

“Whiskey? How did you get your hands on this?”

“John’s people confiscated it. There’s a lot of it still.” He points at her cup, “Don’t be shy. It’s decent stuff, I wouldn’t serve you the shit whiskey.”

“Joseph doesn’t allow alcohol,” she says as if it were simple, “he says it weakens the body in its fight against temptation.” Jacob seems to like the way this argument is going: “Well, would you look at that? That’s one thing where ol’ Joe is wrong. You can’t run an army this size without a little,” Jacob is looking for a word here, searching, finds it, “incentivizing.” Well, he admits, he could, but it’d take some more disciplining and effort, and he is all about efficiency.

Jacob looks over the rim of his own cup. Do as you like, he is saying with his unmoving eyes. He is nothing but consistent there: shotgun, rifle, knife, whatever it is that she likes. Now, whiskey, if she will take it. On another day, if perhaps her white flowers were not aflame and curling up into black husks, she would say, this is not for me. Today, she is feeling a little angry—she is thinking fancifully that it may be the red of Jacob’s hair—and she takes the cup in her hands.

“Clink cups with me,” she says plainly, and he does; the whisky goes down with a light burn. It is not unpleasant, and she says so when Jacob asks if it is not warm, and nice, and a pleasure?

He smiles: “Cheers!—to living long enough for Joseph to scold us for it.”

**Author's Note:**

> A long first chapter, oops...! I have been hankering to write a sort of Greek tragedy-esque Seed family drama after reading somewhere that while Jacob and Faith seem to have expected their deaths, John conspicuously makes no mention of it at all—delicious, delicious family secrets. The, uh, salacious rumors and criss cross of incestous rumblings I would like to blame on taking heavy inspiration from the quoted play “Mourning Becomes Electra,“ a modernized adaptation of the story of Orestes and his sister Electra that is really amped up to eleven in terms of ~melodrama~. At the same time, the said melodrama is also just damn good fun to write...
> 
> The other big reference: the book Faith picks up to read is meant to be Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea,“ the very same from which the other quote hails. The book speaks to way more than just callous treatment of women—I am doing it an injustice here in using it just as a reference point—but thought that the two quotes taken from it, even out of context, worked very well to outline this more-bitter-than-canon take on Faith.
> 
> I feel I’ve done poor Faith a little dirty focusing so much on John in her chapter, but she will be invading Jacob’s one next a rather good amount so perhaps it will even out—hoping to churn that out soon!


End file.
